question about coffee bean ratings Cup of Excellence vs. AAA and best source for green beans

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Ever hear of this outfit? They list the date of arrival of their Bolivian beans (not sure about other areas).

Do you have a recommended source to buy the best beans?

What are your thought about the AAA ratings vs. Cup of Excellence scores?

And any info you might have for a new coffee roaster at home guy would be appreciated. I'm using SR500 roaster for like $170 or something and glanced through some roasting bean books by Kenneth Ross and Scott Rao (from an article I read in Cooks Illustrated).

I'd add ebay as well... sometimes good beans turn up there at reasonable prices.

Sweet Maria's is definitely a fine source.

I pay little to no attention to competition scores, largely because the lot that was judged is often not available... Cup of Excellence generally has an auction for the judged beans, no? Not even a clue what AAA is in the land of green coffee.

Also, even with 24 hours of degassing, I think you're going to find there is an upward slope on the deliciousness curve for about 10 days after roasting.

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I'll add that the Sweet Maria's website contains a wealth of helpful information - from general roasting overviews with photos and videos to tip sheets on specific roasters, like yours. Edited to add that per @cdh below, that tip sheet apparently contains incorrect information. My apologies for directing you to it.

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Hmmm... that tip sheet really is YMMV. Sweet Maria's SR500 goes much much faster than mine does. But SM also had a video talking about problems with scorching of the beans in an SR500 that I saw before I got mine, and which has affected how I've been using the controls. I am not a follower of the race-to-first-crack school of roasting, so I don't crank the heat to high and the fan to low when starting out with the heavy green beans in the chamber not moving around much. I start with low heat and high fan for a minute to two at the start to permit the beans to get dried out and start moving around more, then crank the heat, then turn the fan down to medium after the first snaps of the first crack hit. That's usually at about 5 minutes into the roast. The first crack ends at about 7 or 7.5 minutes in, and that is where I generally stop the roast, because my usual beans are fruity Ethiopians, and getting them much past the 1st crack diminishes the acidity that causes the fruit bomb flavors I'm after.

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I'd not say the tip sheet is incorrect, insofar as they do mention lots of variables that can affect outcome right in the sheet. They say that line voltage (and length of your electrical run) has an effect, and indoor vs outdoor roasting has an effect, as well as how much coffee is in the chamber, etc. But in my experiences with my SR500, at the end of an extension cord out on a patio, with 100g of green coffee in it, the roast goes a lot slower than SM would have you think.

so it's fresh enough to give a package date (which all bean sellers should do says I )

I roasted it on high heat at 4.5 minutes and it looks "dark enough" but not too dark - like a few seconds after 2nd crack.

It was good and the caffeine was super intense for arabica beans. COE score was like 86 or something. Very short and fast finish with no lasting acidity (which is kinda good - considering I had this really bad free coffee with a very long acid finish that was terrible).

check out this vid and let me know your thoughts about Bolivia's beans.

are high quality beans , and not seconds. I order 20 lbs at a time as the shipping rate for this is very low

Me too!! ordered from them for around 12 years already on and off. Always great quality beans, prices reflect that. They also have dual purpose beans (works with espresso, and the rest) so if you can't decide.. 😁

I've also been ordering from http://www.burmancoffee.com years back on their crappy website, but haven't lately -- it seems now they are upping their game w/ google ads, and a new website. Very kool!

The engineer in me is curious: what keywords did you use to google search? I searched using "green coffee beans for sale", and for me, "invalsacoffee" only shows up on the fourth, oft ignored page. Sweetmarias is on the first page, so is burman, so my shill-o-meter is going ding ding ding; but maybe your keywords are different?

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The engineer in me is curious: what keywords did you use to google search? I searched using "green coffee beans for sale", and for me, "invalsacoffee" only shows up on the fourth, oft ignored page. Sweetmarias is on the first page, so is burman, so my shill-o-meter is going ding ding ding; but maybe your keywords are different?

Maybe I should try Sweet Maria's next time.

I googled "Cup of Excellence" beans and the first site that came up was Invalsacoffee.

From just a cursory reading of the Invalsacoffee site it seems like they work directly with the coffee bean farmers in Bolivia. The beans I get their have a package date of June 2018 and they have photos and name of the farmer that grew it. So it's like I know my product is not diluted with cheaper beans from god knows where. For a 10lb bag its like $8 or so dollars of pound green beans.

I read these coffee bean score ratings on Sweet Maria and also the Invalsa site but it's like they don't make it clear that they are Cup of Excellence scores or just some employee of the vendor (with obvious conflict of interest issues).

But it seems like COE is the only scoring I know of that seems objective (I can't tell for sure???).

But Inval seems to really trace the source of the product complete with package date of the beans so I chose them over Sweet Maria's.